Greece considers scrapping €5,000 income tax-free threshold

Athens
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The latest austerity measure under consideration by the Greek coalition government is to scrap the €5,000 income tax-free threshold, ensuring the burden of extra taxation hits the poorest in Greek society,

After months of meetings and desperately ill-conceived plans to come up with additional cuts of €11.66 billion demanded by Greece's Troika of international creditors, the coalition government suffered another setback when the Troika failed to approve €4 billion of the planned measures.

Thus begins another round of hastily dreamt up measures to raise revenue without losing jobs for the boys in the public sector, the one measure which the three coalition partners are desperate to avoid, due to the long tradition of political sufferance. Indeed, no one even knows how many people are actually employed in the public sector.

The latest proposal on the cards is to scrap the €5,000 income tax-free threshold, according to Ekathimerini. The income tax free-threshold was already slashed from €12,000 to €5,000 in a previous round of austerity measures. How quickly the promises of former Interim Prime Minister Lucas Papademos have fallen to the wayside since he declared no new taxes would be imposed on Greek citizens.

Other measures on the table to placate the Troika are the introduction of a six-day work week and the raising of the age of retirement to 67.